Inventory shrinkage is a significant issue for the retail industry, amounting to tens of billions of dollars in losses annually. A significant portion of these losses come from shoplifting, including theft of unpaid merchandise, fraudulent return of unpaid merchandise, and obtaining refunds for merchandise at a higher price than was originally paid. These points of loss may involve receipts, whether real or counterfeit.
To combat inventory shrinkage, stores have employed methods such as surveillance, electronic article surveillance (EAS), marking receipts as used, and having a separate secure area for returning merchandise. Another approach involves the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on every item, with a unique identifier for each tag so that every item can be tracked. However, this requires that every item have an RFID tag, which results in added expense and requires changes in the manufacturing and/or packaging processes. These methods may be personnel-intensive, expensive, and/or not completely effective in preventing losses.
Further, there are privacy concerns surrounding the use of unique RFID tags that identify the items. As RFID tags gain adoption, there is growing concern regarding the potential for these same tags to be used to violate the privacy of the person in possession of the tags. The growth in adoption and the realization of the possibility of such unintended uses have caused an increase in the demand for greater protection against such violations of privacy. Legislation has already been enacted or is under consideration in many countries to restrict the use of such tags in order to protect the privacy of recipients of the tags. One proposed means of protection is the disabling of all tags upon exit or upon the completion of a specified transaction. Disabling the tags renders them unreadable and thus makes them useless for purposes of abuse of privacy. It also makes them useless for identifying the formerly tagged items for the purpose of transaction tracking and verification as well as for inventory control and security purposes.
There is a need, therefore, for an improved method, article of manufacture, and apparatus for inventory control using identification tags such as RFID tags. It is also desirable to have a solution that provides the security and transaction control and monitoring benefits of RFID tags while protecting against violation of privacy.